


of swing sets and starlit skies

by ifthebookdoesntsell



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: F/F, Rejanis, Senior year, Spring Fling, extension of canon universe, how i see it happening, janis and damian brotp, my version of the obligatory rejanis reconciliation, northshore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23952403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifthebookdoesntsell/pseuds/ifthebookdoesntsell
Summary: Since their falling out, which, to be fair, was completely her own fault, Regina had always craved company on her swing set, but she had never really been one to share with anyone besides her childhood best friend.Since Janis, she hadn’t shared pencils. She hadn’t shared jokes. And she definitely had not shared food.But quickly, Janis strides back into her life, and it’s like they’re picking up exactly where they left off. Regina shares the brownies Kylie made with Janis, and they drive each other home every other day.Regina invites Janis back to the swing set before she has too much time to think about all the reasons why she shouldn’t.(Or a rejanis reconciliation involving a swing set, sunsets and stars)
Relationships: Regina George/Janis Ian, Regina George/Janis Sarkisian
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	of swing sets and starlit skies

**Author's Note:**

> I sent the outline of this last night to one of my friends and woke up in the morning with the urge to expand and turn it into prose. In my mind, Regina and Janis' reconciliation happens over time and they slowly fall in love as the year goes by. I hope you enjoy <3

Regina has a swing set. 

She's long overgrown it, but something always brings her back to it. 

_Like gravity_ , she thinks, though she doesn’t fully understand it.

As the years have gone by, her mother has tried to donate it or sell it on so many occasions, but it’s a piece of her childhood that she just can’t give up. 

She has memories of sitting on it with Janis before everything went to hell. Memories of laughter and cool breezes. Memories of pushing each other over and sleeping under the sky. 

The swing set reminds her of the happiness she once had, and she would never forgive herself if she gave it to somebody else who would never understand what it meant. The swing set reminds her that she could learn to be happy again. 

From eighth grade until junior year, it lay ignored in the corner of Regina's backyard, but it’s the summer before she graduates, now, and the night is warm and alive and there are enough stars that the sky feels inviting. 

That summer before senior year, it is not uncommon to find Regina going outside, sitting, and taking a deep breath. 

She hasn’t had anybody to sit with in a long time, and she has convinced herself she likes it better this way. 

_Mean is what you are,_ she reminds herself, but she knows it’s just a phrase to stop the hurting. 

She isn’t mean anymore. 

She hasn’t been since that fateful day when karma finally caught up to her. So instead she reminds herself: _lonely is what you are._

She sits on the plastic, settling in more comfortably, and begins to imagine the life she could have had. She resolved long ago that the swing reminds her too much of her father, but maybe that’s another reason why she has kept it. 

Because that summer, while sitting in the swing closer to the house, it is not uncommon for Regina to pretend. It is not uncommon for her to pretend for a moment that she is young and untouched by life. It is not uncommon for her to pretend she'll get up from the swing, slide the glass door of the house they used to own before her father left, and the man will be waiting there at the dining table. It is not uncommon for her to pretend that her father remembered birthdays and school events. It is not uncommon for her to pretend that he came to the hospital. 

It is not uncommon for Regina to pretend her father never left.

It is not uncommon for her to pretend that she didn’t push away her best friend. It is not uncommon for her to pretend that Janis is just taking longer to come over. 

It is not uncommon--

***

Regina relaxes on the swing, dangling her feet, pretending she's 12 years old again and that the chains aren't rusted and that they don't creak under her weight. 

She no longer flinches at the thought of not weighing 115; instead she reminds herself that if the swing were to break, it would not be much of a fall. The earth would rise to meet her. She wonders if everybody feels this way, or just those who are used to falling and not being caught. 

The swing set is a good place to wonder things, she has found. 

One of the main things Regina wonders about on the swing is if she will ever fall in love. She knows it's a huge thing to wonder about on a cracked swing set at sunset, especially with her mother, her and her sister all contributing to the monthly rent payments on the house they moved into after her father's departure. An event that, if they are honest, the George women never recovered from. But still, she wonders.

Since she got hit by the bus, love is always where her mind goes. 

_Would she have died never having fallen in love?_

Now, her spine curves and she has pain from sitting on the couch too long. She can’t lift heavy things or bend over to turn on a shower. Regina wonders who would ever want to put up with that. 

_Who would want to love somebody so human?_

And trust her, Regina has had plenty of crushes. But it’s only recently that she realized that most of them were because of the girls those boys were dating. It was a startling epiphany to say the least, but she’s Regina George, so she took it in stride. 

Regina easily pushes the thoughts of boys from her mind and thinks of girls. They’re much easier to think about, she finds. Or at least, one girl is easier to think about: Janis. 

Janis, who was once unafraid to sit on the swing set with her; Janis, who visited her in the hospital; Janis, who lives just across the street; Janis, who she could easily invite to sit down next to her. 

“For old times sake,” she would say, knowing that in fact it was not for old times sake. 

But she doesn’t say that. Right now, she feels too easily breakable. 

***

From the summer of senior year on, Regina has always associated swing sets with the heat of July and with the hope that the new feelings inside her would disappear come the dragging days of August. Much to her dismay, the swing set still very much exists when her last first day of high school comes around during the dreaded month. 

The long, summer days she treasured slowly shrink to winter, and she thinks that maybe a part of her shrinks too. Her mom tries to get rid of the swingset again, and, irrationally, Regina lashes out. She’s been working on being nice to her mother. She has been. But she's not quite ready to grow up. She has so much more to wonder about the eventual love she may feel. 

Janis approaches her on the second day of AP Lit and for the first time the beginning days of August don't feel as though they crawl along. 

Regina feels twelve again when Janis asks if she can eat lunch with her, and she blushes when she realizes she had forgotten to answer. She quickly nods, her strong voice having disappeared, and Janis looks at her with the same grin she had when they were kids. 

Since their falling out, which, to be fair, was completely her own fault, Regina had always craved company on her swing set, but she had never really been one to share with anyone besides her childhood best friend. 

Since Janis, she hadn’t shared pencils. She hadn’t shared jokes. And she definitely had not shared food. 

But quickly, Janis strides back into her life, and it’s like they’re picking up exactly where they left off. Regina shares the brownies Kylie made with Janis, and they drive each other home every other day. 

Regina learns new things about Janis too, like how she wins prizes at art shows all the time. Janis laughs at the outrage on Regina’s face, replying easily, “since it’s not sports, nobody talks about it.” 

Regina finds that Janis’ laugh still drips with sweetness, like melted chocolate inside the best cookies, and that it’s still true that nothing is more rewarding than making Janis double over with cramps from something being too funny for her to handle. 

Regina invites Janis back to the swing set before she has too much time to think about all the reasons why she shouldn’t.

***

The forging of this new version of them isn’t easy, though. 

On some days, they take swipes at each other that they both know are low blows. Kälteen bars. Space dykes. They bring it up to pick a fight, to see if the other will leave like last time. They yell at each other, and they make each other red in the face and sometimes they don’t think getting what they had back is worth it. 

As the days go on, the yelling stops, and the crying begins. They hold each other, and they complain of all their lost time. 

“We have so much wasted youth,” Janis grumbles, kicking the grass below her swing, the first to sit in it since her 12 year old self. 

“I know,” Regina agrees, and they look at each other, both feeling a cosmic shift at the admittance. 

They stare at each other, searching each other’s faces, and they both don’t really know what they’re looking for. Regina’s gaze flits over Janis’ face, but she can’t stop returning to soft brown irises.

Janis’ eyes promise safety like a swing and starlit skies in July. Regina hasn’t felt safe in a long time. 

She likes it, she decides. 

It’s halfway into senior year now, and Gretchen and Karen have been scolding her for lack of confession to Janis. 

“You’re in a good place,” Gretchen insists, and Karen nods along with her, but Regina shakes her head.

Instead, she sits on the swings with Janis and tells her how sorry she is for the eight hundredth time and Janis shakes her head with a soft smile.

_It’s okay._

Regina breathes out a sigh of relief every time she knows that Janis forgives her. 

Damian is the harder one to win over, but she tells him that Come From Away is one of her favorite musicals and he softens immediately. 

She tells him she likes girls, and he says back gently, “I know.” 

She knows what he’s saying by the tone in his voice. 

_It’s okay._

***

It’s new for her, having real friends that really know her, and she tells Janis so on the swings. She tells her how the moon has felt like her only company since the eighth grade. 

“You don’t have to be alone anymore,” Janis whispers. 

Regina is crying, but they don’t talk about it. 

***

As the months go by, Regina realizes the earth no longer has to catch her; Janis is there. They sit there under tangerine sunsets and seasoned breezes; and after a new moon hangs in the sky on the cusp of spring, they lie under a fading lilac horizon and their hands finally intertwine. 

Seeing this, the stars get ready to go on their stage that is the sky, and as the sun signals them by setting, they reply _thank you, places_ and hit their marks with a gorgeous twinkle.

Janis points out constellations that Regina never took the time to learn about before. 

“That’s the Little Dipper,” she murmurs with a voice drenched in such a large amount of wonder that Regina thinks she could drown in it. 

Janis points out Sirius with a grin. “In Greek, it means glowing!”

She knows that Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and she’s curious to see it, but Regina has trouble taking her eyes off of Janis’ face. 

The only constellation Regina knows is Orion, so she grabs Janis’ wrist gently to guide her toward it. Her heart stutters when she feels Janis’ eyes on her. It feels like too much and not enough all at once. 

Unconsciously, she shifts closer to her on the blanket, laying her head against Janis’ shoulder and throwing an arm across her waist before redirecting their attention to the outline of stars. She ignores the way her breath seizes when Janis pulls her closer and brushes her lips over her forehead.

Instead, she tells the story her mother always tells when all three George women sit outside on the first day of summer. “He was a great hunter who fell in love with Artemis, goddess of the moon, but her brother was angry and tried to pull them apart by asking Gaia to come between them. So, Gaia sent Scorpius to battle Orion, but neither would win, and neither would lose. In the end, they both died, neither having accomplished what they wished for.”

“That’s sad,” Janis mumbles, her eyes drooping at Regina’s voice. 

The blonde’s warmth has lulled her into a doze, but she’s still listening as Regina continues and cuddles closer to avoid a breeze from the last gasp of Illinois winter.

“In order to ensure peace, Zeus placed Orion in the winter’s sky and Scorpius in the summer’s, so they could never fight again. Beautiful, isn't it?” 

Regina is breathless as she turns to lay on her side. Janis nods gently, as to not disturb the thoughts she can see working in Regina’s brain. 

Regina thinks of her mother, whenever she tells or hears that story, and for the first time she realizes why she tells it over and over to anybody who will listen. How she hopes that her father is in the winter sky, and her mother is in the summer and that they may never meet again. 

How she hopes her mother would be the one to be immortalized in the summer sky, her favorite, because her mother is the one who stayed. 

She doesn't say any of that, but Janis knows. 

They lie there all night, and Regina wakes up in Janis’ hoodie and to the sound of laughter. She feels the spot next to her and panics when it’s empty, but then she turns to see her mom, Kylie and Janis making breakfast together like old times. 

Except not like old times at all. Because she and Janis are dancing around something they both didn’t know existed when they were twelve, and by the look she gets from soft brown eyes when she enters the kitchen in a hoodie she took about a month ago, Janis knows it too. 

***

It feels like getting hit by the bus all over again when Cady asks, “when are you going to ask Janis to Spring Fling?” 

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. But if she’s honest, she hadn’t even thought about Spring Fling, which would be shocking to her sixteen year old self, but now Regina is seventeen, and has been hit by a school bus, and she’s definitely gay. 

So she didn’t really think she would be going to Spring Fling this year. 

But the way Cady asked her made her wonder if Janis was expecting it. They don’t really talk about all the nights they spend together in Regina’s backyard, laughing about their younger selves and learning new constellations, but Regina knew it wasn’t just friendship that propelled all of those nights. 

She thinks about it for days, whether she should make a grand gesture, how she would even ask, but a week and a half later, when it actually comes up, it’s the most casually satisfying experience of Regina’s admittedly short life.

“Damian says my suit has to match your dress for the dance.” 

Janis says it offhandedly, but it makes Regina freeze in her tracks. 

Hearing the lack of movement from her, Janis turns to face her and sees the look of panic on Regina’s face. 

“Oh, I just thought you and I would be--” Janis flushes red. 

“I would love to go with you.” 

They smile at each other. It feels a lot like stargazing. 

***

That week, they share their first kiss.

Janis paces back and forth, bouncing ideas off of Regina for her newest painting while Regina sways forward and backward gently on the swing. 

Kylie and her mom are out, and while her mom winked at her not to get up to anything funny, Regina _really_ didn’t plan to. She just likes listening to Janis talk about her art. 

But there’s also something as gorgeous as the story of Orion about Janis when she talks about colors and shading and light that has Regina stopping her swinging with her foot just to watch. Janis doesn’t register anything different until she turns to the blonde with mischief already surfacing in her eyes. 

“What?” 

Regina smiles back and shrugs, but they both feel something--something like the stars aligning. They gravitate towards one another, and Janis kisses Regina gently while she’s still on the swingset, and suddenly it has new meaning.

 _This doesn't feel like childhood anymore_. 

She thinks it giddily in the deep recesses of her brain as she stands up and coaxes Janis deeper into the kiss. Regina is pulling her down by the collar of her shirt, and she makes a note to herself to buy Janis a new one if it becomes stretched out. She presses her tongue gently into the kiss and Janis makes a noise in the back of her throat that makes Regina want to-- 

_Oh. Is this what kissing is supposed to feel like?_

Kissing Janis feels different than kissing any boy she’s ever been with. 

Softer. 

Safer. 

Their noses bump and they both laugh into the kiss, but they don’t make any signal to move away from each other. It feels like they wouldn’t be able to pull away, not even to breathe. 

In this moment, Regina finally understands gravity. 

***

Janis agrees to be her girlfriend when they kiss for the second time. Since the beginning of the year, there has been a sort of inevitability to them, and Regina is beyond herself that it’s finally happening.

It happens on the first night of May, Spring Fling not far off. 

Regina notices how the chains of the swing set no longer creak so much when she sits down, like it has been given a new life. Or maybe it knows Regina has changed. 

It’s like their first kiss, but this time they know which way to turn; and Regina knows that Janis likes it when she reaches up on her toes; and Janis knows that Regina likes it when she plays with the baby hairs on the back of her neck. 

They kiss like the rest of the world isn’t there, and for a moment Regina almost believes it to be so. She whispers out the question and before she can even finish Janis is biting her lip around a smile and nodding. 

“Yes, I would like that very much,” she whispers. “But only if you’ll be mine?” 

Regina stands there, pretending to think about it. “I dunno. I’ll have to get back to you.” 

Orion shines down and the moon grins at her. 

She laughs at the shocked gape on Janis’ face before she pulls herself out of the loose grasp on her waist and scampers away. But before she gets too far, she feels a pair of strong arms around her that spin her round gently for another kiss. 

It all feels too right to fully comprehend, but Regina smiles at the thought that this is another memory that she can associate with the swing set. 

They sink into their third kiss, feeling young, alive and a little in love. Regina feels her heart beating up her ribcage when she realizes she no longer has to wonder what it feels like. 

_Love. This is it,_ she tells herself, and she knows it to be true.

Regina catches a glimpse of the swing she had been sitting on, and it was still rocking, as if cheering her on. 

In her time without Janis in her life, Regina didn’t know why she never invited anyone else to join her on the swing in the years they weren’t speaking, but now she understands. 

Regina understands why she sat alone for such a long while, why she could never allow herself to fully open up to anybody else. Because even if they hadn’t forgiven each other, even if they hadn’t gotten to this point, even if, on their fourth kiss, Regina hadn’t agreed to be girlfriends, the swing next to hers would still _always_ belong to Janis. 

It is forever their place. No matter what happens, it is impossible for it to belong to anybody else.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! anything you like? it makes my day when people drop me a comment, a kudo or come yell at me on tumblr @ifthebookdoesntsell


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